NICHOLAS THE FISH
Five hundred years ago there was a great Italian swimmer, even greater
than our Captain Webb; inasmuch as he had what the wags of the age
unjustly ascribe to our hero, that is to say, web toes and fingers. This
capable man could, if history be true, not only swim for a week without
ceasing (reassuring solid nature now and then by a gulp of live fish),
but also could expand his chest so considerably that it held enough air
for a day's consumption. Fortified thus, he explored Charybdis and all
the Liparic whirlpools, and could have found Cadman's gun anywhere, if
it had only been there. But at last the sea had its revenge upon him,
through the cruel insistence of his king.
No man so amphibious has since arisen through the unfathomed tide of
time. But a swimmer and diver of great repute was now living not far
from Teesmouth. That is to say, he lived there whenever the state of the
weather or the time of year stranded him in dry misery. Those who have
never come across a man of this description might suppose that he was
happy and content at home with his wife and growing family, assuaging
the brine in the delightful manner commended by Hero to Leander. But,
alas! it was not so at all. The temper of the man was very slow to move,
as generally happens with deep-chested men, and a little girl might
lead him with her finger on the shore; and he liked to try to smell
land flowers, which in his opinion were but weeds. But if a man can not
control his heart, in the very middle of his system, how can he hope to
command his skin, that unscientific frontier of his frame?
“Nicholas the fish,” as his neighbors (whenever, by coming ashore, he
had such treasures) contemptuously called him, was endowed from his
birth with a peculiar skin, and by exercise had improved it. Its virtue
was excessive thickness--such as a writer should pray for--protected
also by powerful hairiness--largely admired by those with whom it is
restricted to the head.
Unhappily for Nicholas, the peremptory poises of nature struck a line
with him, and this was his line of flotation. From perpetual usage this
was drawn, obliquely indeed, but as definitely as it is upon a ship of
uniform displacement--a yacht, for instance, or a man-of-war. Below
that line scarcely anything could hurt him; but above it he was most
sensitive, unless he were continually wetted; and the flies, and the
gnats, and many other plagues of England, with one accord pitched
upon him, and pitched into him, during his short dry intervals, with a
bracing sense of saline draught. Also the sun, and the wind, and even
the moon, took advantage of him when unwetted.
This made his dry periods a purgatory to him; and no sooner did he hear
from Mr. Mordacks of a promising job under water than he drew breath
enough for a ten-fathom dive, and bursting from long despair, made a
great slap at the flies beneath his collar-bone. The sound was like
a drum which two men strike; and his wife, who was devoted to him,
hastened home from the adjoining parish with a sad presentiment of
parting. And this was speedily verified; for the champion swimmer and
diver set forth that very day for Bempton Warren, where he was to have a
private meeting with the general factor.
Now it was a great mistake to think--as many people at this time did,
both in Yorkshire and Derbyshire--that the gulf of connubial cares had
swallowed the great Roman hero Mordacks. Unarmed, and even without his
gallant roadster to support him, he had leaped into that Curtian lake,
and had fought a good fight at the bottom of it. The details are highly
interesting, and the chronicle might be useful; but, alas! there is no
space left for it. It is enough, and a great thing too, to say that
he emerged triumphant, reduced his wife into very good condition, and
obtained the due mastery of her estates, and lordship of the household.
Refreshed and recruited by the home campaign, and having now a double
base for future operations--York city with the fosse of Ouse in the
east, and Pretorian Hill, Derbyshire, westward--Mordacks returned, with
a smack of lip more dry than amontilladissimo, to the strict embrace of
business. So far as the needs of the body were concerned, he might have
done handsomely without any business; but having no flesh fit to weigh
against his mind, he gave preference to the latter. Now the essence
of his nature was to take strong views; not hastily--if he could help
it--nor through narrow aspect of prejudice, but with power of insight
(right or wrong), and stern fixity thereafter. He had kept his opinion
about Sir Duncan Yordas much longer than usual pending, being struck
with the fame of the man, and his manner, and generous impulsive nature.
All these he still admired, but felt that the mind was far too hasty,
and, to put it in his own strong way, Sir Duncan (whatever he might be
in India) had been but a fool in England. Why had he cast away his claim
on Scargate, and foiled the factor's own pet scheme for a great triumph
over the lawyers? And why condemn his only son, when found with such
skill and at heavy expense, without even hearing both sides of the tale?
Last, but not least, what induced him to marry, when amply old enough
to know better, a girl who might be well enough in her way, but had no
family estate to bring, was shrewdly suspected of a cutting tongue, and
had more than once been anything but polite to Geoffrey Mordacks?
Although this gentleman was not a lawyer, and indeed bore a tyrannous
hate against that gentle and most precious class, he shared the
solicitor's just abhorrence of the word “farewell,” when addressed to
him by any one of good substance. He resolved that his attentions should
not cease, though undervalued for the moment, but should be continued
to the son and heir--whose remainder in tail subsisted still, though it
might be hard to substantiate--and when his cousin Lancelot should come
into possession, he might find a certain factor to grapple him. Mr.
Mordacks hated Lancelot, and had carried out his banishment with intense
enjoyment, holding him as in a wrench-hammer all the way, silencing his
squeaks with another turn of the screw, and as eager to crack him as if
he were a nut, the first that turns auburn in September.
This being the condition of so powerful a mind, facts very speedily
shaped themselves thereto, as they do when the power of an eminent
orator lays hold of them and crushes them, and they can not even squeak.
Or even as a still more eminent 'bus driver, when the street is blocked,
and there seems to be no room for his own thumb, yet (with a gentle
whistle and a wink) solves the jostling stir and balk, makes obstructive
traffic slide, like an eddy obsequious, beside him and behind, and comes
forth as the first of an orderly procession toward the public-house of
his true love.
Now if anything beyond his own conviction were wanted to set this great
agent upon action, soon it was found in York Summer Assizes, and
the sudden inrush of evidence, which--no matter how a case has been
prepared--gets pent up always for the Bar and Bench. Then Robin Lyth
came, with a gallant dash, and offered himself as a sacrifice, if
needful, which proved both his courage and his common-sense in waiting
till due occasion demanded him. Mordacks was charmed with this
young man, not only for proving his own judgment right, but also for
possessing a quickness of decision akin to his own, and backing up his
own ideas.
With vigor thus renewed by many interests and motives, the general
and generous factor kept his appointment in Bempton Warren. Since the
distressing, but upon the whole desirable, decease of that poor Rickon
Goold, the lonely hut in which he breathed his last had not been by any
means a popular resort. There were said to be things heard, seen, and
felt, even in the brightest summer day, which commended the spot to the
creatures that fear mankind, but not their spectres. The very last of
all to approach it now would have been the two rollicking tars who
had trodden their wooden-legged watch around it. Nicholas the fish was
superstitious also, as it behooved him well to be; but having heard
nothing of the story of the place, and perceiving no gnats in the
neighborhood, he thankfully took it for his short dry spells.
Mr. Mordacks met him, and the two men were deeply impressed with
one another. The diver admired the sharp, terse style and definite
expression of the factor, while the factor enjoyed the large ponderous
roll and suggestive reservations of the diver. For this was a man who
had met great beings, and faced mighty wonders in deep places; and he
thought of them more than he liked to say, because he had to get his
living.
Nothing could be settled to a nicety between them, not even as to
pounds, shillings, and pence. For the nature of the job depended wholly
upon the behavior of the weather; and the weather must be not only at
its best, but also setting meekly in the right direction at the right
moment of big springtide. The diver was afraid that he might ask too
little, and the factor disliked the risk of offering too much, and
possibly spoiling thereby a noble nature. But each of them realized (to
some extent) the honesty of the other, and neither of them meant to be
unreasonable.
“Give and take, is what I say,” said the short man with the monstrous
chest, looking up at the tall man with the Roman nose; “live and let
live. Ah! that's it.”
Mr. Mordacks would have said, “Right you are,” if that elegant
expression had been in vogue; but as that brilliance had not yet
risen, he was content to say, “Just so.” Then he added, “Here you have
everything you want. Madam Precious will send you twice a day, to the
stone at the bottom of the lane, a gallon of beer, and victuals in
proportion. Your duty is to watch the tides and weather, keep your boat
going, and let me know; and here I am in half an hour.”
Calpurnia Mordacks was in her duty now, and took her autumn holiday
at Flamborough. And though Widow Precious felt her heart go pitapat at
first sight of another Mrs. Mordacks, she made up her mind, with a gulp,
not to let this cash go to the Thornwick. As a woman she sighed; but as
a landlady she smiled, and had visions of hoisting a flag on her roof.
When Mordacks, like a victorious general, conqueror of this Danish town,
went forth for his evening stroll to see his subjects and be saluted, a
handsome young sailor came up from the cliffs, and begged to have a few
quiet words with him. “Say on, my lad; all my words are quiet,” replied
the general factor. Then this young man up and told his tale, which was
all in the well-trodden track of mankind. He had run away to sea, full
of glorious dreams--valor, adventure, heroism, rivers of paradise, and
lands of heaven. Instead of that, he had been hit upon the head, and
in places of deeper tenderness, frequently roasted, and frozen yet more
often, basted with brine when he had no skin left, scorched with thirst,
and devoured by creatures whose appetites grew dainty when his own was
ravening.
“Excellent youth,” Mr. Mordacks said, “your tale might move a heart of
flint. All who know me have but one opinion. I am benevolence itself.
But my balance is low at my banker's.”
“I want no money, sir,” the sailor answered, simply offering benevolence
itself a pipeful of tobacco from an ancient bit of bladder; “I have not
got a farthing, but I am with good people who never would take it if
I had it, and that makes everything square between us. I might have a
hatful of money if I chose, but I find myself better without it, and my
constitution braces up. If I only chose to walk a league sou'west, there
would be bonfires burning. But I vowed I would go home a captain, and I
will.”
“Ha!” cried Mr. Mordacks, with his usual quickness, and now knowing
all about everybody; “you are Mr. John Anerley, the son of the famous
Captain Anerley.”
“Jack Anerley, sir, till better times; and better they never will be,
till I make them. But not a word to any one about me, if you please.
It would break my mother's heart (for she doth look down upon people,
without asking) to hear that Robin Cockscroft was supporting of me. But,
bless you, I shall pay him soon, a penny for a guinea.”
Truth, which struggles through the throng of men to get out and have
a little breath sometimes, now and then succeeds, by accident, or the
stupid misplacement of a word. A penny for a guinea was as much as Robin
Cockscroft was likely ever to see for his outlay upon this very fine
young fellow. Jack Anerley accepted the situation with the large
philosophy of a sailor; and all he wanted from Mr. Mordacks was leave
to be present at the diving job. This he obtained, as he promised to be
useful, and a fourth oar was likely to be needed.
It was about an hour before noon of a beautifully soft September day,
when little Sam Precious, the same boy that carried Robin Lyth's note to
Mary, came up to Mr. Mordacks with a bit of plaited rushes, the scytale
of Nicholas the fish, who was happy enough not to know his alphabet. The
factor immediately put on his hat, girded himself with his riding sword
and pistol belt, and told his good wife that business might take him
away for some hours. Then he hastened to Robin Cockscroft's house, after
sending the hostler, on his own horse, with a letter to Bridlington
coast-guard station, as he had arranged with poor Carroway's successor.
The Flamborough fishermen were out at sea; and without any fuss, Robin's
boat was launched, and manned by that veteran himself, together with old
Joe and Bob, who had long been chewing the quid of expectation, and at
the bow oar Jack Anerley. Their orders were to slip quietly round, and
wait in the Dovecote till the diver came. Mordacks saw them on their
way; and then he strode up the deserted path, and struck away toward a
northern cove, where the diver's little boat was housed. There he found
Nicholas the fish, spread out in all his glory, like a polypod awash, or
a basking turtle, or a well-fed calf of Proteus. Laid on his back, where
the wavelets broke, and beaded a silver fringe upon the golden ruff of
sand, he gave his body to soft lullaby, and his mind to perfect holiday.
His breadth, and the spring of fresh air inside it, kept him gently up
and down; and his calm enjoyment was enriched by the baffled wrath of
his enemies. For flies, of innumerable sorts and sizes, held a hopeless
buzz above him, being put upon their mettle to get at him, and perishing
sweetly in the vain attempt.
With a grunt of reluctance he awoke to business, swam for his boat, and
embarking Mr. Mordacks, pulled him across the placid bay to the cave
where his forces were assembled.
“Let there be no mistake about it,” the factor shouted from the
mermaids' shelf, having promised his Calpurnia to keep upon dry land
whenever the water permitted him; “our friend the great diver will first
ascertain whether the thing which we seek is here. If so, he will
leave it where it is until the arrival of the Preventive boat. You all
understand that we wish to put the matter so that even a lawyer can not
pick any hole in the evidence. Light no links until I tell you. Now,
Nicholas the fish, go down at once.”
Without a word the diver plunged, having taken something between his
teeth which he would not let the others see. The watery floor of the
cavern was as smooth as a mill-pond in July, and he plunged so neatly
that he made no splash; nothing but a flicker of reflection on the roof,
and a lapping murmur round the sides, gave token that a big man was
gone into the deep. For several minutes no one spoke, but every eye was
strained upon the glassy dimness, and every ear intent for the first
break of sound.
“T' goop ha' got un,” cried old Robin, indignant at this outrage by a
stranger to his caves, “God niver mahd mon to pree intil 's ain warks.”
Old Joe and Bob grunted approbation, and Mordacks himself was beginning
to believe that some dark whirlpool or coil of tangles had drowned the
poor diver, when a very gentle noise, like a dabchick playing beneath a
bridge, came from the darkest corner. Nicholas was there, inhaling air,
not in greedy gulps and gasps, like a man who has had no practice, but
leisurely encouraging his lungs with little doses, as a doctor gives
soup to a starved boat crew. Being hailed by loud voices, he answered
not, for his nature was by no means talkative; but presently, with very
little breach of water, he swam to the middle, and asked for his pipe.
“Have you found the gun?” cried Mordacks, whose loftiest feelings had
subsided in a quarter of a minute to the business level. Nicholas made
no reply until the fire of his pipe was established, while he stood in
the water quite as if he were on land, supporting himself by nothing
more than a gentle movement of his feet, while the glow of the
touch-paper lit his round face and yellow leather skull-cap. “In coorse
I has,” he said at last, blowing a roll of smoke along the gleaming
surface; “over to yon little cornder.”
“And you can put your hand upon it in a moment?” The reply was a nod and
another roll of smoke. “Admirable! Now, then, Joe, and Bob the son of
Joe, do what I told you, while Master Cockscroft and our nimble young
friend get the links all ready.”
The torches were fixed on the rocky shelf, as they had been upon the
fatal night; but they were not lit until Joe and his son, sent forth in
the smaller boat to watch, came back with news that the Preventive gig
was round the point, and approaching swiftly, with a lady in the stern,
whose dress was black.
“Right!” cried Mr. Mordacks, with a brisk voice ringing under the
ponderous brows of rock. “Men, I have brought you to receive a lesson.
You shall see what comes of murder. Light the torches. Nicholas, go
under, with the exception of your nose, or whatever it is you breathe
with. When I lift my hand, go down; and do as I have ordered you.”
The cavern was lit with the flare of fire, and the dark still water
heaved with it, when the coast-guard boat came gliding in. The crew, in
white jerseys, looked like ghosts flitting into some magic scene. Only
the officer, darkly clad, and standing up with the tiller-lines in hand,
and the figure of a woman sitting in the stern, relieved their spectral
whiteness.
“Commander Hardlock, and men of the coastguard,” shouted Mr. Mordacks,
when the wash of ripples and the drip of oars and the creak of wood gave
silence, “the black crime committed upon this spot shall no longer
go unpunished. The ocean itself has yielded its dark secret to the
perseverance of mankind, and the humble but not unskillful efforts which
it has been my privilege to conduct. A good man was slain here, in
cold blood slain--a man of remarkable capacity and zeal, gallantry,
discipline, and every noble quality, and the father of a very large
family. The villain who slew him would have slain six other harmless
men by perjury if an enlightened English jury had been fools enough to
believe him. Now I will show you what to believe. I am not eloquent, I
am not a man of words; my motto is strict business. And business with me
is a power, not a name. I lift my hand; you wait for half a minute; and
then, from the depths of this abyss, arises the gun used in the murder.”
The men understood about half of this, being honest fellows in the main,
and desiring time to put heads together about the meaning; but one there
was who knew too well that his treacherous sin had found him out. He
strove to look like the rest, but felt that his eyes obeyed heart more
than brain; and then the widow, who had watched him closely through her
black veil, lifted it, and fixed her eyes on his. Deadly terror seized
him, and he wished that he had shot himself.
“Stand up, men,” the commander shouted, “until we see the end of this.
The crime has been laid upon our force. We scorn the charge of such
treachery. Stand up, men, and face, like innocent men, whatever can be
shown against you.”
The men stood up, and the light of the torches fell upon their faces.
All were pale with fear and wonder, but one was white as death itself.
Calling up his dogged courage, and that bitterness of malice which had
made him do the deed, and never yet repent of it, he stood as firmly as
the rest, but differed from them in three things. His face wore a smile;
he watched one place only; and his breath made a noise, while theirs was
held.
Then, from the water, without a word, or sign of any hand that moved
it, a long gun rose before John Cadman, and the butt was offered to his
hand. He stood with his arms at his sides, and could not lift them to
do anything. Neither could he speak, nor make defense, but stood like an
image that is fastened by the feet.
“Hand me that,” cried the officer, sharply; but instead of obeying, the
man stared malignantly, and then plunged over the gun into the depth.
Not so, however, did he cheat the hangman; Nicholas caught him (as a
water-dog catches a worn-out glove), and gave him to any one that would
have him. “Strap him tight,” the captain cried; and the men found relief
in doing it. At the next jail-delivery he was tried, and the jury did
their duty. His execution restored good-will, and revived that faith in
justice which subsists upon so little food.